Honduras Highlights

Continuamos... The journey from Guatemala to Honduras was fast and easy as our first destination lay just across the border. The ruins at Copan did not boast the impressive pyramids and temples we climbed in Mexico and Guatemala, but it is famous for unique stone carvings called "stelae" with hieroglyphics depicting Mayan life. We quickly found a lovely 7$ a night hotel room and were off to the ruins. The ruins in Copan were very tranquil and proved to be a nice grand finale of the Mayan tour. We had the place to ourselves, partly because it is off the beaten track and partly because it costs 15$ a head to enter. . All in all: pretty cool, a little pricey, and a bit ho-hum after Tikal. While in Copan Ruinas, we were tempted to pay for an afternoon horseback tour into the local mountains but then couldn't find the sketchy looking guy who offered us 3 hrs. for 20$. This turned out to be a blessing as later a fellow Canadian traveler told us that his guide was drunk and he was robbed by 2 teenagers holding a loaded pistol. We are grateful for our Central American karma thus far... After a little culture, we wanted to have some more fun in the Carribbean. We took a 10 hour ride on a sticky bus to the Bay Islands. The ride took us through the green, lush mountainous interior of Honduras with intermittent forest-clearing fires and road-side trash. The land is beautiful here and several regions have been preserved as National Parks and Reserves. Rather than visit a park or two (which posed logistic challenges), we decided on the islands famous for the cheapest scuba diving in the WORLD - 20$ per dive! We had to decide on either Utila: backpacker mecca, smaller, cheaper, fewer beaches; or Roatan: bigger, more expensive, more night life, better beaches. We chose Utila and our Lonely Planet Bible, Central America on a Shoestring, was right on... smaller, cheaper, and smellier as the local trash dump was right behind our hotel (and everywhere else for that matter). But alas, we quickly focused on our real destination, the coral reefs under the surface, and decided to spend the week on a small caye off of Utila.

This island, called Jewel Caye, was even more developed than the mainland with all the buildings overextending the island in every direction. There wasn't a grain of sandy beach and every space was covered by concrete, decks, or trash. But at least it put us right on the coral (mere steps from our hotel room) which facilitated daily snorkeling and diving jaunts. I can pretty much describe it as a 3-D hike on an alien planet. The coral landscape is truly breathtaking and the octopus, squid, turtles, rays, and zillions of fish made the overcrowded terrestrial world worth it. Once again, we tourists were at odds w/ the local fishing community and so we tried to stay away from the cheap lobster and fish dishes.
The highlight of the week was our final dive where we were joined by 2 marine biologists from the Whale Shark Research Center. A whale shark had been sighted off the island the day before and they were in search for some pictures and to observe behavior. Their eyes were acutely trained to search for "boils" in the sea caused by a tuna feeding frenzy on minnows which were feeding on plankton. During this time of year, whale sharks feed on tuna and a boil nearly always indicates the presence of a whale shark. It was pure excitement when a boil was spotted on our way to the first dive site. As the boat pulled right up to a huge dark shadow in the water, we were instructed to glide into the water as gently as possible. When we ducked our snorkels underwater, we saw a 30 foot male whale shark!! We knew this was a tremendous event because even the biologists were beaming. And all of this before we even dove for the day... This picture was taken by one of the marine biologists. Although I´m not sure this is the same day, this is what it looked like: After a quick stop at the capital, Tegucigalpa, we pretty much kept trucking to Nicaragua.